


Sooner Surrender

by saltfromthesea



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow series - Gemma T. Leslie
Genre: Fluff, M/M, One Shot, Post-Book: Carry On, carry on spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltfromthesea/pseuds/saltfromthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a little Baz/Simon one-shot, since I seem to be incapable of getting them OUT OF MY HEAD. </p><p>A few months after the end of Carry On, Simon and Baz have a fight around the holidays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sooner Surrender

It’s remarkable, really, how quickly the loneliness comes back.

It’s like it’s just been biding its time, knowing it would have a way back in, because the second the door slammed behind him, there it was, curled up under my ribcage like a cat, heavy and draining, and it’s been there ever since.

 _Hello, old friend_.

I shuffle around into the apartment. It’s only midafternoon, but it’s getting dark—clouds are rolling in overhead, threatening snow, and it feels perfect, just piles and piles of cold and isolation heading my way.

I know I’m being dramatic, but I can’t help it.

I’ve been by myself plenty of times in the past few months, since the end of Watford and the end of the Mage and the end of my magic. I’ve had moments, hours, even whole days to myself, but it’s been so long since I’ve felt this alone. Not since the summers in between school years have I felt so cut off from…well, from everything. Everyone.

I don’t turn on the lights, despite the growing darkness. I sit on the couch, then stand back up again—sitting too long irritates my tail. I pace around the room. Glance at the pictures on the wall without really seeing them—Penny hung them up just before she left, and I haven’t really taken the time to notice them, but it seems now isn’t the time either.

I’m being foolish, I guess. Penny really is just a phone call away, and I know if I call she’ll pick up. I know she feels bad about leaving me here for the holidays, but she’s got to spend them with her family, and then she’s going to America to spend a week with Micah, and it’s a shitty friend I’d be if I interrupted either of those things. After all, I get her all the time. Just because she’s got hordes of people jockeying for her attention and I’ve got approximately none, well, that doesn’t give me the right to monopolize her.

Now I’m just being bitter. I’d talk myself out of it if I wasn’t alone on Christmas Eve. Maybe I should just get sodding drunk by myself to round out this whole sorry equation.

I think of Baz’s back, his spine as straight as a lamppost, when he walked out on me this morning, and I close my eyes. I don’t want to think about that.

There’s nothing distracting enough in the kitchen—I might as well order Chinese food, because, well, why not.

It’s funny, I suppose we’ve been fighting most of the time we’ve known each other, but this was different. This—well, this one hurt.

I can feel that cloud of loneliness growing the more I think about it. It seems I can’t not think about Baz, but I’m not ready, not willing, to think about this morning, so I cast my mind around for some other memory—any other memory.

_You can have…this. If you want it._

Nope. Not that one, either.

 

* * *

_It was our early days at Watford—second year, maybe? Early enough that Baz was more of an inconvenience and an irritation than a nemesis. Early enough that I didn’t spend every waking hour obsessing over where he was—I mean, he hadn’t tried to kill me yet, so why would I? Except I woke up in the middle of the night as he was slipping out._

_It had happened before, sort of—I’d wake up and he’d be gone—and I’d tried not to wonder where he was off to, but sometimes I’d wonder about it at odd hours of the day, like in the middle of class or while I was brushing my teeth. But all of a sudden I’d found myself awake, the door shutting as soft as a whisper behind him, and I didn’t really even think about it before sliding out of bed myself to follow him._

_He cut through the dark faster than I would have thought possible—it was all I could do to keep him in my line of sight while trying to keep myself hidden, and I think if he hadn’t been moving so quickly I wouldn’t have been able to._

_There was something so sleek, so entrancing about the way he moved, sliding like silk through the darkness while I stumbled along behind him. When he got to the catacombs, he didn’t even pause before going inside. I did, though. I knew what was down there—dead things and the kind of darkness my eyes couldn’t adjust to. Still, though, if Baz could do it, I was determined to do the same thing, and I’d strutted right in, shoulders back, guns blazing._

_Of course I was a lost cause the second I was inside. Blacker than pitch, wasn’t it, the kind of darkness that weighs on you, that makes you sure you aren’t alone. And I wasn’t alone, but damned if I knew where Baz was._

_I ended up hovering near the entrance of the catacombs, waiting until I heard his footsteps—what I_ hoped _were his footsteps—coming back, and then I raced out ahead of him, sprinting back to our room and throwing myself under the covers before he returned. Of course, I tracked grass stains all over the carpet, but he never said anything. In all honesty, he probably never noticed._

_But that was the turning point. For me, anyway. From then on, I was hooked.  
_

 

* * *

 

A knock on the door rouses me from my little jaunt down memory lane. I look up, startled—nobody I know would be coming over on Christmas Eve, they’re all home with their families. I thought I’d only thought about ordering that Chinese food, but maybe I did call? I swear, sometimes, I really am losing my mind.

But when I open the door, it’s Baz standing there, his shoulders hunched, his eyes on my feet. There’s snow in his hair. The storm must have started. The sight of him actually sends my traitor heart into overdrive—I can practically feel it attacking my rib cage.             _  
_

_Knock it off_ , _heart_.

He looks so different than he had this morning, blazing and ferocious, snarling in my face. Smaller, somehow.

“What’re you doing here?” I say, and I’m proud how my voice comes out, like iron, not a tremor to be had. “Thought you were going home for Christmas. _Alone_.”

He still won’t meet my eyes, but I see him wince as I parrot his words from this morning back at him. Silly me, I somehow thought we’d both be going to his house for the holidays—after all, they’ve got plenty of room—I’d packed a bag and everything. But he’d seen it when he came by this morning and he’d gotten stiff and cold and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t welcome. _I think everyone would be more comfortable if you just stayed here, Snow_ , he’d said.

He looks so small. It’s not like him to be meek, and my frostiness is starting to melt, replaced with worry because damn it, I can’t help it.

“Can I come in?” he says, so quietly.

“You don’t need an invitation,” I say, and it’s supposed to come out tough and mocking, but instead it just sounds small. We match.

And finally, finally, he lifts his chin and our eyes meet. Despite his docile exterior, I’m relieved, so relieved, to see that his eyes are still burning. If I’m being honest, I forget to breathe. I stare back at him, and for just a moment, it’s like I’m made of fire, too.

I move, just a little, angling my body, making room for him to come in, and apparently that’s all the invitation he needs because in two strides he’s crossed the threshold, shrugging off all vestiges of timidity; his hands meet my chest, gripping my t-shirt, and his mouth is suddenly, insistently against mine.

I push back, stepping into him. His back is against the door and it slams shut as we collide; I nearly lose my balance, stumbling against him, my hands flat against the door on either side of his head, our bodies pressed together. He slides one hand from my chest up my arm and I bring my hand down to meet his, our fingers locking together. He’s got my bottom lip between his teeth, tugging at it gently, and that’s how I know he was really scared—normally he’ll never get even remotely this close to biting me, but here we are. His other hand is still fisted in my shirt, and as he pulls, it rips along the collar.

“Hey,” I protest, but it’s muzzy and half-hearted—right now, my mouth doesn’t want to be doing anything but kissing him. “Careful, I only have so many of these.”

“I’ll buy you a new t-shirt, Snow,” he growls raggedly, pulling on it harder, and the fabric tears apart. His mouth moves down along my jaw, and my other hand goes into his hair, and then he’s pushing at me, slamming me into the other wall, and I’m suddenly so very, very glad that Penny isn’t home because this is the kind of thing that would never happen if she were, the two of us ricocheting like ping-pong balls off the walls of the apartment, too hungry for each other to stop.

It’s funny, but it still feels like we’re fighting.

 

But then I’m kicking open the door to my bedroom and he’s kicking it closed once we’re inside—I’m not sure why, because, again, Penny isn’t here, but it’s not like either one of us is thinking clearly—and Baz is clutching me and I’m clutching him and we’re falling in a tangle onto my bed.

It is easier, in the end, to rip the my shirt off than to try and deal with my wings, and Baz doesn’t waste any time in doing so. Then he’s sliding down the length of me, his mouth on my neck, my collarbone, my sternum…and then he stops, his hand fluttering against my ribcage, his face lifting up, his gaze meeting mine.

It’s been a few months—since Baz graduated Watford, since Penny and I moved in here—a few months that we’ve been doing…everything we’ve been doing, but still, this is uncharted territory for us. I had plenty of grieving to do, and we both had a lot to deal with, and after all, I’ve never done any of this with a boy before, and he’s never done any of it at all.

We’re both breathing hard, my chest rising and falling beneath his hand, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d say he suddenly looked shy.

“Simon…” he says, and I lean forward, deciding for the both of us, pushing my hands through his hair as he sighs against me. Then I’m reaching for the bottom of his shirt and he’s pulling away from me so he can wriggle out of it and it’s too long, too long for me to not be touching him, too long for his lips to be away from my lips, so then I’m grasping him by the base of his neck, pulling him back into me. His hand slips back down to my ribcage, to my stomach, to my hip, and his nose is brushing mine, his face so close I can feel his eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, and this is as much at home as I will ever be.

 

* * *

 

It’s only just now occurred to me that he can see in the dark. I mean I know he’s a vampire, I know he can _now_ , but back then, in our second year, I didn’t. That night, in the catacombs—he would have known I was there the whole time, and he never said a word. Just let me follow him.

 

* * *

 

Later, we curl around each other in the dark. It’s real dark, now, night-dark, not storm-dark, and I think we’re both drifting in and out of sleep. Baz has his chin pressed into my shoulder, and my mouth is at his temple, my nose in his hair. He smells like cold and like snow, which makes me smile. Between us, our fingers are wrapped together so tightly that I think maybe they’ll start to grow like that. Inseparable.

I’m more asleep than not when he speaks, his breath on my skin and his voice muffled.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?” I say, startled.

“For this morning,” he says. “For…everything I said.”

I shrug, even though I know he hates it when he does that, and sure enough, he groans against me. “Words, Snow, _words._ ”

“What do you want me to say?” I ask. “You hurt my feelings. I didn’t want to be alone at Christmas. But…you came back.”

“I actually didn’t come back to…come back,” he says, and for a second I feel my heart plummet into my stomach until he finishes, “I came to bring you with me.”

I prop myself up on one elbow, looking down on him. “What? But what about that whole…it’s better for everyone if I stay here, thing?”

He flops over, burying his face in a pillow, muttering something unintelligible until I nudge him in the ribs and he rolls back over, his face drawn.

“I was scared,” he says. “I was _scared_ , Simon. I mean, you know what my dad’s like, what my family is like—I just couldn’t bear bringing you with me and having them not acknowledge what that _meant_. I couldn’t bear having them behave like you were just my friend—and even us being friends is something they wouldn’t be able to understand. I just wanted to pretend everything was the way they wanted, just for the holidays. It felt like too much. It’s my family, you know?”

“No,” I say, and there’s a bitter edge to my voice even as I try to tamp it down. “Not really, Baz, I don’t, because my family? My family is the two other people who live in this apartment.”

There’s a long silence and then Baz says, “I don’t actually _live_ here, you know, technically it’s just you and Bunce—” and I shove him, rolling him away from me, and he’s laughing and rolling back.

He sobers quickly. “I know, though,” he says. “I know. And I knew the second I left this morning that I was overthinking things, that I was wrong. I got home and my dad was, you know, he was fine. But then my stepmother—my mother—she was surprised to see me without you, she wanted to know where you were, said she was sure you were coming, and I just—” he pummels the pillow in between us, his teeth bared. “Crowley, I don’t _care_ what my dad thinks, in the end, or if he’s comfortable for the holidays or not. I just want you with me.”

“Good,” I say, throwing an arm across his stomach and pushing my face into his hair again. “Because I choose you, too, Baz. I do. I choose you.”

I feel him go completely still beneath me, and I know he remembers saying those words to me so many months ago.

“I’m yours,” I say, whispering now. “I am. You can’t fight it.”

He nudges his nose against my jaw, his lips grazing the place where my neck meets my shoulder. “I suppose I _could_ fight it,” he says against me, “but I’d just as soon surrender.”

And he does.


End file.
